I Love meatballs, and I love my slow cooker so these were a win-win! I’ve never been a huge fan of cooked spinach so if you aren’t either I would maybe sub out the spinach for cabbage or some other vegetable that holds up well in the slow cooker. My kids weren’t too fond of the spinach either, but I think the cabbage will be a little more appealing to their little eyes ;) The taste of the meatball was great though and went nicely with the cabbage slaw I made for a side dish! Hope you enjoy!

Slow Cooker Italian(ish) meatballs – Grain Free
(Makes about 30 – 1 1/2 inch meatballs, I used the ice cream scoop to form the balls)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs ground beef (or meat of choice)
3 eggs
1/2 cup of pine nuts (I think next time I will use chopped pecans, the kids picked out the nuts:)
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
4 large mushrooms, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large carrot, grated (the veggies can really be whatever you have on hand, be creative it’s a great way to try new flavors!)
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/3 cup Almond Meal, or other gluten free flour
1 – 14 oz can tomato sauce
6 big handfuls of fresh spinach, or about a half head of shredded cabbage

Directions:

1. Prep all your vegetables, you should end up with about 3 cups of assorted shredded/chopped veg.

2. Place meat and all your ingredients (except tomato sauce and spinach) in a large bowl, roll up your sleeves and start mixing with your hands. My second born tried this once and was doing it with his fingertips so as to not get his hands dirty, but that’s not going to work! You really want all these ingredients to be well incorporated before you start forming the balls.

3. Get your slow cooker out and pour in enough tomato sauce to coat the bottom of the crock. Then take two handfuls of spinach and cover the sauce with fresh spinach. Now you are ready to form your first layer of balls.

4. Get our your ice cream scoop and start making meatballs. I am using a 6 quart slow cooker, if you have a smaller one you might want to adjust your ingredients to fit, but I could have fit plenty more in the crock. Shape the meatballs and place them around the outer edge of the crock, then fill in the middle.

5. Add a little tomato sauce between the meatballs to cover the spinach, now take two more handfuls of spinach and cover the meatballs. Repeat 4 and 5 until you’ve got all the meat formed into balls. Top with the rest of your tomato sauce and the rest of your spinach. In my crock it ended up being two layers of meatballs.

6. Place the lid on your slow cooker and cook on High for 3-4 hours, or on Low for 5-6 hours. Enjoy!!

Aren’t they just the cutest little fried eggs?! We have a few quail that are good little layers, their eggs are pretty small. It takes about 3 eggs to make up the size of a chicken egg. I’ll save up my quail eggs for a few days and give the kids a quail egg feast for breakfast, they each eat about 5 fried quail eggs(30 eggs) if I have that many :)

Quail eggs fry up pretty much the same as chicken eggs, but their shells are very different. The membrane beneath the shell is really tough so you can’t crack the eggs like you can a chicken egg, you either puncture with a sharp scissor and cut a slit to open or use a very sharp knife and hack the end off. This is my preferred method but it takes a little practice. We love our little quail they are sweet little birds and provide a supplemental food source to our family! It’s especially nice in the winter when my chicken’s aren’t laying as well. Thanks girls!

There is really no better way to start off your day (in my humble opinion) than with a filling green smoothie. They are so easy to make and chalk full of nutrients to get your day going in the right direction. Sometimes I’m in the mood for eggs and bacon with the kids and that’s another great way to start the day, and those days I push the smoothie back until lunch. Either way, it’s a great way to get a big portion of greens and antioxidants into your daily diet.

Green Smoothie
Makes 1 serving, 3 cups (I usually end up sharing a little with my kids so that’s why I make it so big, if you don’t have kids to share with you might cut back on the berries and coconut milk a little :)

Ingredients:
1/2 banana
1/2 cup coconut milk (full fat)
3 cups fresh spinach
1 1/2 cups frozen berries, I use a mixture of strawberries, blueberries and blackberries
1 Tbsp Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, melted
1 scoop Whey Protein powder (or serving size on your protein powder of choice)

Here’s how I start mine out:

1. Banana, coconut milk, and spinach and whir together until spinach is pureed.

2. Then I add the frozen strawberries and blueberries and whir again, it helps if you start out at a low speed then slowly speed up.

3. When adding the melted coconut oil I get the mixture going and then add the oil while the machine is going. If you dump it into the blender while it’s stopped it will most likely harden and you will get coconut oil chunks in your smoothie which will probably get stuck in your straw :)

4. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth. Drink while it’s cold!

Enjoy!

I love gardening books, if you are wanting to start small this year with a couple of raised beds I would really suggest the book, “All New Square Foot Gardening”, it was the inspiration of my square foot gardens a few years back, it was simple and easy to flip through and gain some knowledge about how to get started. Very easy read!

This next book is great too, “Carrots Love Tomatoes” is a book about what plants like to be planted together, and which to keep apart from each other, it also give a little info on each of the plants mentioned and is a helpful resource for the gardener.

And for the more advanced gardener, or the family who is wanting to turn their whole yard and maybe even their house into a living breathing garden that feeds you and the rest of the neighborhood the whole year through, this next book is for you! “Gaia’s Garden” is a great resource for the gardener who wants to turn their yard into a food forest that eventually will take care of itself, this is our long term goal and I’ve learned so much from this book. It’s inspirational and somehow takes the fright out of tackling such a huge project! One step at a time.

Three great resources, I hope this helps you in your endeavors to growing some food for your family this coming year! Life is full of many changing seasons. I’m hoping to revamp my garden this year. We had to kind of tear up our garden to get my mom’s house moved in so I’m not sure what will happen with our garden this year, we are also having a baby in June so I may have to push my garden out another year, but it’s always in the back of my mind, I look forward to the day when I’m providing a good amount of food for our family from our garden, but like everything that is worth while, it takes time and effort! Happy Gardening!

This isn’t the best picture nor did my garden do the best that year :) But you can see, some of the sections are planted and some aren’t, because I was spacing things out, I had planted some rows of carrots (the kids eat a lot of carrots) and was waiting a couple weeks to plant some more :) Also, something I’m going to change when we do an overhaul on our garden plans; I made really wide spaces (I think about 5-6 ft) between garden boxes, so that I could mow between the boxes with our riding lawn mower. Next time I will make the boxes a lot closer together and just use the weed eater or plant a low lying ground cover between the rows. As soon as I can get the other photo to upload I will show you what I mean. :) The wide spaces seem like wasted space to me, and mowing with a rider between the rows actually just spreads weed seeds (I guess so would the weed eater). Ground cloth over the pathways, or planting a ground cover would be a better plan. Hope that helps! And we have chickens, a fence around the whole garden will be nice too!

It’s late January and my kids decided today that they wanted to watch a Christmas movie?! So what better recipe to post than what we had for dinner over the holidays, to be honest I don’t remember which one it was, Christmas or New Years? They were kind of a blur. Anyway, the meat in this recipe turned out amazing!! We had them with tortillas, but they could easily be a Paleo friendly meal; just use romaine lettuce for a wrap, or blanch a cabbage leaf, or you can add lettuce or cabbage and make a Carne Asada salad. I will be making this recipe again!

Carne Asada

Ingredients:
2 pounds flank or skirt steak
Green Cabbage, shredded
Bell peppers or choice, chopped
Avocado, cilantro, and anything else you want to put in your burrito!

Marinade:
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 jalapeño chile pepper, seeded and minced
1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seed (best to lightly toast the seeds first, then grind them)
1 large handful fresh cilantro, leaves and stems, finely chopped (great flavor in the stems)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 limes, juiced
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup olive oil

Preparation:
1. Lay the flank steak in a large non-reactive bowl or baking dish. Combine marinade ingredients and pour the marinade over the steak. Make sure each piece is well coated. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-4 hours.

2. Preheat your grill over medium-high flame (you can also use a cast iron grill pan on high heat for stove-top cooking). Brush the grates with a little oil to prevent the meat from sticking. Remove the steak from the marinade. If you are cooking indoors, you may want to brush off excess marinade as the bits may burn and smoke on the hot pan. Season both sides of the steak pieces with salt and pepper. Grill the pieces for a few minutes only, on each side, depending on how thin they are, until medium rare to well done, to your preference. You may need to work in batches (We kept the ones that were finished in a heated ceramic bowl).

(Make sure you are having a lot of fun while making the steaks, this part is crucial)

3. Remove the steak pieces to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. Thinly slice the steak across the grain on a diagonal.

***Serve wrapped in your favorite warm tortilla, lettuce, cabbage, or make a salad. There are so many options in making this a delicious  healthy meal. I’d love to hear how you made them!

I love banana bread. Of course it’s tough making “bread” without wheat or some other kind of flour, but this recipe will satisfy that desire for a yummy sweet bread, just without the “bread” and a bunch of sugar! Next time I make this I’m going to make a couple changes, I’m going to add some chopped nuts, and I’m going to leave the chocolate chips whole instead of melting them on top (but both are optional).

Grain Free Paleo Banana Bread

Ingredients:
1 cup Almond Butter
1 cup Bob’s Red Mill Almond Meal
3 medium brown, spotty bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Chips
1/3 cup chopped nuts (I prefer pecans)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Grease loaf pan.

2. In a mixing bowl, mash bananas until the chunks are gone. Add the rest of the  ingredients and mix incorporated. Pour the batter into a loaf pan (or muffin tin, just adjust the cooking time).

3. Bake for approx. 35-40 minutes, until the center is hard to the touch. Let the banana bread cool before removing from the pan. Or if you are like me, let it cool for awhile and then when it’s still kind of hot get it out of there so you can taste it! Enjoy!

Don’t forget to slather some butter on that hot slice of yummy bread!

One thing that is hard about making big changes in your diet is eliminating some or many of the things you’ve grown to love. One of those loves in my life have been sugar, namely chocolate. I love desserts, I love to read about them, see pictures of them, and even more, I love to plan and bake and yes, I love to EAT them. So that has been a bit of a downer about taking on the paleo lifestyle. Sugar is a bit of a no-no. Part of me has felt a little deflated, until this past week when I discovered a paleo recipe blog called Health-Bent. A husband and wife team who love cooking, and she was formerly a pastry chef, yeah! They’ve got a ton of great recipes, and what I was even more excited about, they’ve got quite a few delicious paleo friendly real dessert recipes! I’ve already tried two of their recipes and I’m impressed, even the kids loved them, although maybe that’s not such a good thing? ;) Here we go…

Grain Free Brownies

Ingredients:

1 c almond butter (I used the store bought kind but I think I’m going to try it with the freshly ground kind next time)
1/2 c canned coconut milk (full fat)
2 eggs
2 t vanilla extract
1/4 t salt
1/4 c sugar (optional or sweetener of choice)
1/3 c cocoa powder
1/3 c chocolate chips (use the highest % cocoa you can find, around 70% is good)
1/3 c chopped nuts

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease bottom of 9×9 inch pan.

2. In a medium mixing bowl whisk together; almond butter, coconut milk, eggs, vanilla, salt, and sugar.

3. Add cocoa and whisk until fully incorporated.

4. Fold in chocolate chips and nuts. Next time I try them I’m going to add a half cup of coconut flakes for more texture.

5. Pour ingredients into prepared pan and bake for 18 minutes, or until center is firm.

I let them cool for awhile but couldn’t wait too long, so they were actually still hot when I tasted the first one. Honestly, I was a little nervous because the batter did not taste very good, but these turned out really well. Looking forward to trying these again!! Enjoy!!

Every time I have made pancakes, my kids love them, they are homemade and tasty, full of butter and pure maple syrup, but eventually these ingredients will catch up with my kids. I really desire to help my kids form good habits, healthy habits. So that it’s not so hard to eat healthy when they are adults living on their own. I’m not talking about completely removing all forms of grain, carbs, sweets, and processed foods from their diet. But I want them to be the exception and not daily consumption.

Last week I got the cookbook, “Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals” by Mark Sisson. He has some great recipes in there, and I was excited to try some out! I found this recipe and modified it, and today I think I felt like I can really do this lifestyle for our whole family, not just Chris and I! I’ve struggled with feeling guilty when my kids ask for a piece of toast with their eggs, because that is what they are used to (and they are probably still hungry). But when we made these “pancakes”, the kids were satisfied with one serving and didn’t ask for anything else until lunch. When we’ve had pancakes with syrup, they ask for seconds, thirds and sometimes fourths! So even if the berries are a little more expensive, this is a very economical meal because they don’t eat as much, and you can feel really good about what they are eating! Anyway, as you can see, I’m really excited about this recipe, but let’s get to it!

Grain-Free, Egg Pancakes
Serves 4

Ingredients:

5 eggs (whites and yolks separated)
3 Tablespoons butter, divided
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups mixed berries, fresh or frozen
Shredded Coconut, for garnish (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat a 10-inch (oven safe) skillet on the stove top on medium high heat. I use a cast iron skillet so I heat at a little lower than medium. Add butter 2 Tablespoons of butter to the pan.

2. While the pan is heating, separate the whites and yolks into separate bowls. Beat the eggs until stiff peaks form, set aside.

3. Add vanilla and cinnamon to egg yolks and stir until fully incorporated. Gently fold egg yolk mixture into the egg whites.

4. With the temp of the pan still at medium high, pour egg mixture into the pan, gently spread mixture evenly to the edges of the pan and cook for 2 minutes, do not touch egg mixture. Put the pan into the preheated oven and cook for 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned.

5. While eggs are cooking, get your berries going in a small sauce pan, with the remainder of the butter. I start them out at about medium and then turn down to a simmer when they start to heat up, it will be different if you use fresh berries so just pay attention so they don’t burn. Cook until you get the desired consistency, my kids prefer the berries less lumpy so I cook them a little longer, but with frozen berries this should take 10-15 minutes.

6. When the pancake is finished, remove from oven and let it sit for a minute. Then place a large plate on top and carefully turn pancake over onto the plate. Spread berry mixture over the pancake and garnish with fresh berries or shredded coconut. Serves 4

And though I was just a little tempted to tell the kids there was only enough for mommy, I did split it up and share with the kids. So delicious! You just have to try it! And please come back and tell me how yours turned out! :)

Simple Baked Rockfish

Ingredients:

Several fillets (I think we had seven so there was quite a bit of fish)
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Pepper
Lemon Juice (fresh)

Directions:

1. I love making fish because it is so good for you, and it is really the easiest meat dish to make, and it almost always turns out delicious! Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Just slather a foil lined baking sheet with olive oil, put your fresh fillets on the baking sheet and sprinkle with sea salt, pepper, and squeaze a little lemon on top (you might sprinkle a little dried sea weed if you have some but I didn’t).

3. Cover with foil and bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, remove foil and bake another 10 minutes or until fillets flake with a fork, don’t over bake you don’t want dry fish.

Serve hot with tartar sauce and Sauteed Garlic Brussels Sprouts! To die for! Well not really but almost ;)

When I was a little girl I hated disliked brussel sprouts. (Okay, so did you know that they are not actually called “brussel sprouts” they are called “Brussels Sprouts.” After the city of Brussels in Belgium where they were discovered, I didn’t know that until today :) But as an adult I started making them myself, and I have found that I really like them now. My mom informed me last night that she always made them from frozen sprouts, maybe that is why I disliked them? Well, these Brussels Sprouts were delicious, and even most of the kids liked them! And that is always a plus when it comes to cooked vegetables! Delish!

Sauteed Garlic Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds fresh Brussels sprouts
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Tbsp butter, divided
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

1. Take some your fresh Brussels sprouts, and wash them, then cut the ends off.

2. In a large pan, on med heat, sautee chopped garlic in olive oil and 1/2 the butter.

3. When garlic is nicely browned, add the chicken broth, salt and pepper and Brussels sprouts, stir and cover.

4. Turn heat down just a touch, stir occasionally, and cook for 12-15 minutes or until tender.

5. When they are fully cooked add the rest of the butter, and I even added a little more salt and pepper. Serve hot and enjoy! I was delighted to hear several of my kids saying, “I LIKE brussel sprouts!” (That was before I knew they were called Brussels sprouts ;) Hope you like them as much as we did!  I served them with baked rockfish and tartar, which was also really tasty!!